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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29296593">i don’t miss you.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/2weeksfromlou/pseuds/2weeksfromlou'>2weeksfromlou</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Styles - Fandom, Louis Tomlinson - Fandom, One Direction (Band), liam payne - Fandom, niall horan - Fandom, zayn malik - Fandom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Larry Stylinson Is Real, Longing, M/M, Multi, Poetry, Spotify, carobae, larry - Freeform, larry stylinson - Freeform, noor unnahar, one direction - Freeform, ziall</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 06:49:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Underage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,208</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29296593</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/2weeksfromlou/pseuds/2weeksfromlou</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“grow like a wildflower. the one people do not notice for they don’t smell like exquisiteness. and when you know you have grown into something that is remarkably exquisite, help those who are like the wildflowers that do not smell like exquisiteness”</p><p> </p><p>When Harry’s crush on his lifelong friend, Louis, starts to develop into actual feelings, he feels a surge of emotions. Love, longing, butterflies, and jealousy. He never plans on his best friend, Liam, falling for him right as Harry starts to figure out his feelings.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. prologue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>hi! this is my first time writing anything like this so if it’s shit, i’m sorry. if you do like it or have any questions, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter @2weeksfromlou !</p><p>i will try to post weekly, and i have a spotify playlist (linked below) if you’d like to listen while reading. there is no specific order, these songs just helped me process the story. (they do not all directly correlate, but remind me of the story or how i felt writing it). the poem in the summary is from a book called, yesterday i was the moon, written by noor unnahar. it’s a lovely book that i highly reccomend!</p><p>https://open.spotify.com/playlist/40lmGp7FhOw5H4l2hUSSmG?si=EOroT63zS1anspRZvBNqhA</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Louis Tomlinson. </p><p>That’s the name that’s been running around Harry’s head for thirteen years, belonging to the boy whose eyes are the most beautiful shade of blue he had ever seen. A soft blue, similar to the sky on a spring afternoon, to Harry’s favorite flavor of ice cream (cotton candy, of course), to the calm ocean after a storm. The boy, who’s smile is warm enough to dry the tears running down the cheeks of anyone he deems worthy of his gaze, warm enough to make Harry’s bad moods melt into laughter and fond eyes as he stares as the boy he cares about so deeply. It’s the name of the boy he met at soccer practice when Harry was four and Louis was five. </p><p>Louis Tomlinson was, according to Harry, the best person in the world. His favorite person in the world. It wasn’t Harry’s fault that when he was around Louis he’d feel fluttering in his belly, his cheeks would turn a deep shade of pink whenever Louis held his gaze for longer than a few seconds, or his pulse would speed up whenever they touched. Whether it was a tight hug proceeding a whisper of, “See you later,” or fingers brushing when they walked down the street together, any contact resulted in Harry being flushed and giggly. He’d had a crush on Louis for as long as he could remember. It wasn’t a big deal, just a silly little infatuation that had been brewing for years over the course of their friendship due to their close proximity. As they reached ninth grade, however, Louis had transferred to a private school on request of his parents. Though they still lived about a five minute car ride away from each other, school became a distraction from their friendship and they slowly drifted apart. They spoke often enough to still consider each other close friends, and the distance helped to conceal and limit the extent of Harry’s feelings. </p><p>They got together regularly between Harry showing up at Louis’ footie matches unannounced or Louis stopping by the bakery Harry worked at for a snack and an excuse to drive Harry home after his shift. Their usual routine after the surprise visits would consist of grabbing something to each, catching up on the time they’ve spent apart (they rarely went more than two weeks without seeing one another. Not on purpose, it just worked out that way), before camping out at one of their houses for a few hours, ignoring their other responsibilities to prioritize each other for the time being. Due to the intensity of their friendship at such a young age, Louis was always welcomed into Harry’s home and vice versa. Louis would be invited to stay for dinner and spend time with Harry’s mum and sister, as well as Harry, as if he had been born into their little family. Harry always loved that about the two of them. How easily they fit into each other’s lives with little effort, (not that they didn’t make an effort to be good friends) and managed to pick up where they left off every time they went a while without talking. No matter what was going on in their lives, they could rely on their friendship staying the same, which was often the only grounding relationship they both had. A lot had changed in their lives growing up from when they first met, for better and worse. They both took comfort in knowing things would never change between them. </p><p>This is the reason Harry pushes his feelings to the back of his mind and pretends he doesn’t get lost in Louis’ eyes from time to time, or stare at him in the middle of the night as the moonlight dances over his face, appreciating the curves of his cheekbones and lips. He forgets about the times Louis is so close to him that he could feel his breath against his skin, about the nagging voice in his head whispering, “kiss him,” when they were curled up on the couch watching a movie when they were thirteen. Harry has tried to sneak a glance at Louis only to see he was already staring. His cheeks went hot under Louis’ gaze, but neither could find the strength to look away. So they sat there, inches apart, knees angled towards one another, staring into each other’s eyes for what felt like forever, before Gemma had walked into the living room to see what they were up to. Harry could’ve sworn that that night, before his sister had made an appearance, Louis had started to lean towards him. But he pushes that thought out of his mind everyday in an attempt to keep his feelings under wrap and his daydreams from running out of control.</p><p>Louis only likes him as a friend. He knows that, and that’s the most important thing. As long as Harry has Louis, he’ll be alright. Right?</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>links for </p>
<p>harry’s photo wall:</p>
<p>https://pin.it/3Uj9pfs</p>
<p>louis’ contact photo:</p>
<p>https://pin.it/vh68nXi</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There was still some snow on the ground. It was near the end of March, unusually warm for this time of year. Perhaps it’s due to the blazing sun, which has been visiting the sky for the last few days, shining down on the footie pitch. Harry had been not uncharacteristically antsy lately, but more so than usual due to the recurring snow days he’d been having. His mum had thought he might like to try playing football. Her thought process consisted of trying to find an activity he would enjoy that could allow him to get his energy out while possibly being able to help with his balance and stability. It’d taken him 2 years to learn how to walk properly, without stumbling over himself with every step. Not too far behind the average child, but as he reached the age of four he still had problems staying vertical when he wanted. It was the end of winter during his first year of kindergarten. Waiting patiently beside his mum while she spoke to the coach, Harry’s dark green eyes wandered around the pitch and parking lot as cars filed in and kids hopped out, matching him with their athletic shorts and long sleeves poking out underneath their t-shirts. Some of the older kids, he notices, have long socks on that make their legs look bulky. He looks down at his own legs, skinny and bare as he dawns ankle socks and the same pair of sneakers he’s had since he started preschool. Suddenly, becoming hyper aware that he is lacking something the older kids have, he hides in the side of his mom's leg, praying no one will notice that he doesn’t fit in. It’s not long before he hears more parents gather around the coach and his mum, the other kids standing a few feet away talking about school and showing off their own, brand new footballs that their mums had bought for the start of the season. Tightening his grip, Harry’s eyes continued to wander the group, recognizing most of the kids from his class or from recess, before they landed on a short, blue eyed boy off to the side. He’s sitting alone on a bench, examining the inside of his sneaker, as if there is something hidden inside. Glancing down, he notices the boy has the long socks on that make his legs look double the normal size for a child. He’s shaking the shoe upside down now, a satisfied smile growing on his face as a tiny pebble falls out to the ground. He swiftly shoves his foot back into the shoe, not having untied it in the first place, before glancing over at the crowd of kids. He looks slightly nervous, even though he’s the same age as the kids in the group. He looks a couple inches taller than Harry, he assumes from his perch on his mum’s leg. He looks lonely, too, Harry thinks. Maybe he just needs a friend. And if so, Harry could be that friend. </p>
<p>And with the idea of making a new friend, Harry musters the courage to release his grip and stumbles over to the boy.</p>
<p>“Hi, I’m Harry,” he announces himself, startling the boy who has zoned out, staring at the tree off the side of the pitch. “I like your socks!”.</p>
<p>“My… socks?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, they make your legs look huge! I wish my legs were bigger, maybe I wouldn’t fall as much. My mum tells me I have a lack of…” he thinks to himself, forgetting the five syllable word he had heard on the drive over, “ coordination! Whatever that means. Do your socks help with that?”</p>
<p>The boy looks utterly lost. Eyes switching between Harry’s curious expression and his knee socks before shooting a look to Harry’s legs. This immediately worries Harry, eyes widening while thinking he is about to be teased for his bare legs and instability. Instead, the boy looks once more at his own legs before he has a moment of realization.</p>
<p>“Oh, are you talking about my shin guards?” Louis asks, sitting down on the bench and rolling his left knee sock down to his ankle, revealing a red, shiny plastic strapped to his shin. Harry’s jaw drops, and his cheeks redden in embarrassment. The last thing he was expecting was for Louis to reveal plastic covering the front of his leg underneath his sock. “They protect your shins from the ball or getting accidentally kicked! I have an extra pair if you want to borrow them, they leave little lines on your legs after a while and make a tingly feeling when you take them off after practice!”</p>
<p>Harry’s eyes, now wide due to excitement instead of embarrassment, follow Louis’ hands to his bag as he pulls out two shiny red pieces of plastic. Accepting them in his hands, he sits down on the grass in front of the boy, a slow smile spreading over his face. </p>
<p>“These are so cool! Thanks…,” he hesitates, “Uh, who are you?” Harry questions. The boy in front of him had been kind enough to answer his question and share his leg bulking shin guards with Harry before sharing his name.</p>
<p>“Louis. There is an ‘s’ at the end but it’s silent.” He proclaims, clearly proud of his name and his knowledge of silent letters. Harry straps the guards to his shins and stands up excitedly. He looks between them and smiles, tugging Louis along to where his mum is standing.</p>
<p>“Mum! Mum! This is my friend, Louis, and look!” He shouts, his arms directing her glance to his legs enthusiastically, “He let me use his shin guards! Now nobody can kick me or hit me with a soccer ball!”</p>
<p>“Wonderful, sweetheart!” she replies, looking over to Louis, “Hello Louis, lovely to meet you!”</p>
<p>“You too! Hold on,” he demands, before running away. After thirty seconds, the boy is back, tugging along a woman who is likely his mum, Harry thinks. “Mum, this is my friend Harry, and my friend Harry’s mum. Now you two can be friends, too!”</p>
<p>The women exchange pleasantries, Harry’s mum letting her know that Harry will, of course, return the shin guards so kindly given to him by Louis.</p>
<p>“Don’t worry about it! He can keep them. My Louis has three more pairs at home, he likes the variety of colors,” she jokes.</p>
<p>Before they can direct their attention back to the boys, they are already off running to the bench to grab Louis’ football, kicking it back and forth before the coach calls everyone over to start the first practice of the season. That night, Harry begs his mum to call Louis’ mum so they can set up a play date. He doesn’t take no for an answer when she explains that she has no way to contact the woman, insisting at their next practice that she must get her number. And of course, she does.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>For the next seven years, Harry and Louis spend a lot of time together. Harry stopped playing football after third grade, claiming that Louis was better anyways, and he’d rather watch. They have several play dates a week, alternate houses for their weekly sleepover on Friday nights, and spend what time they can at school together. This includes Harry playing with Louis and his friends at recess and Louis sitting at Harry’s table during lunch everyday. When they reach middle school, Harry in seventh grade, Louis in eighth, they start to make other friends. Not one of them replaces Harry or Louis, but they limit their time spent together in school to their walk to and from school and waving as they pass each other in the hallway. Friday night sleepovers are still a rather frequent activity, but they are not as strict about missing a week. It’s not until Louis enters high school, switching to a private school that his parents decided he would attend, that they start to drift apart. It’s not a bad thing, to be honest. There is no jealousy as they start to spend time with their other friends as often as each other or hard feelings when they don’t talk for a week. Whenever they get to hang out, they pick up where they left off, like they were at soccer practice in kindergarten. </p>
<p>Harry grows closer with some of the kids he’s been friends with for a while, Zayn Malik and Niall Horan, who are in his grade, and Liam Payne who is a year above him. The four of them become a group quickly as they all have classes together, and start hanging out on a regular basis. They all know of Louis, of course, considering he’s in a couple pictures framed around Harry’s home and inside Harry’s room. They also know that if he is ever busy and can’t hang with their group, he’s with Louis. Louis, growing closer with his friend Stan who he’s shared classes with for years, knows of Harry’s friends too. They have never met, but he’s seen them on Harry’s social media posts and from a couple pictures in his room, still being crowded by photos of him and Louis over the years. Louis always smiled at that, knowing that he’s still Harry’s favorite person, and Harry is his. </p>
<p>One fall night, the start of Harry’s freshman year, he’s hanging out with Liam in his room. They had been working on homework after school but shortly after gave up to watch movies on Liam's computer. They had been about halfway through some comedy movie when Harry’s phone started to ring. It had taken him a few moments to find it tangled up in the blankets, before a familiar photo of two boys had appeared on his phone, the contact name reading, lou :) . Harry’s cheeks get immediately flushed as a soft smile appears on his face, biting his lips to suppress the turn of his lips once he remembers Liam is next to him. He clears his throat before answering the call. They chat for a few minutes before Louis realizes Harry isn’t alone, hearing Liam cough in the background. They say hello and all chat for a couple minutes, throwing Harry for a loop when they start making flirty jokes towards one another. The smile on Harry’s face is slowly starting to disappear as he becomes less and less involved in the conversations regarding Louis’ footy tryouts and Liam teasing that he thinks footy players are hot, and that Louis is definitely not the exception. After about five more minutes, Louis turns the conversation back to Harry and Liam excuses himself as he has to head home for dinner. </p>
<p>“You never told me your friends were cool, Haz,” he chuckles, still on a high from flirting with Liam. “If I had known maybe I could’ve hung out with your friend group more”. Harry tells himself it was all jokes. Obviously they don’t like each other, they only just met. He’s quick to change the subject and they catch up on family drama and school before Louis tells Harry that his first match is gonna be in two weeks. Obviously, Harry will go. He always does. He has a sign he made a couple years back, reading Louis’ name and jersey number, twenty-eight in glitter glue and markers that his older sister had helped him make. After the game, they go to get food together and then go to Louis’ house to watch movies before passing out. It’s become a nice tradition for them. </p>
<p>***</p>
<p>After that phone call, Liam and Louis don’t talk again. For the next two and a half years they continue with their normal routine of seeing each other sporadically. Their hangouts are cut shorter as they gain more responsibilities like jobs and a more difficult workload, but they make it work. Still, when they do get to see each other it’s as if no time has passed. They were the same boys from fifth grade who would walk to the ice cream shop everyday after school talking about the weird dreams they had the night before or their current aspirations. At the time, Harry wanted to become an astronaut and test his theory, is the moon really made of cheese? Louis, slightly more realistic, wanted to be a professional football player. As they got older, their dreams changed. Louis’ junior year English teacher opened him to a world of books and classic literature that he fell in love with. Halfway through Harry’s sophomore year, he turned sixteen and got a job at the local bakery. Quickly, he grew to love baking even more and shortly after decided he might light to open a bakery of his own one day. Louis, of course, was first to know. It was his idea, in fact, that he open a bakery/bookstore so Louis could have his three favorite things in one place. </p>
<p>Books, baked goods, and Harry.</p>
<p>It’s not until one late spring night during Harry’s junior year that things start to take a turn. He and Liam are hanging out in his bedroom, blatantly ignoring their open books laid out in front of them, choosing to focus on the movie they had watched earlier that day, the pasta Harry’s mom had made them for dinner, and the two month anniversary of their best friends which explained their absence. </p>
<p>“I just can’t believe it’s only been two months,” Liam speaks first once the topic of pasta runs dry, “I feel like they’ve been together forever.” Harry nods in agreement. Niall and Zayn had been crushing on each other since they were all freshman. Everyone knew, except for the other, and it was painfully obvious. They were both too scared to ruin the friendship dynamic between the four boys to do anything about it, and while Harry completely understood, Liam was constantly picking fights with them about just getting on with it and to tell the other how they felt. </p>
<p>Thinking back, maybe Harry should’ve seen it coming. What happens next, he means. This night, the night of their best friend's anniversary of finally getting their shit together and confessing their feelings for one another, starts a domino effect of events that nobody could’ve seen coming. </p>
<p>Certainly not Harry.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>hi! i hope everyone enjoyed the prologue! i got a lot of positive feedback and a lot of support so far and i am so so grateful to everyone who took the time to read my story so far.</p>
<p>i think my uploading schedule will be every sunday at the latest. i’m not sure how quick i’m going to be writing these chapters, but i will always be posting on my twitter updates and if there are any delays so don’t be afraid to follow me, @2weeksfromlou !</p>
<p>anyways, this chapter is all flashbacks to set the scene for the story to take place. starting next chapter, it will all be present tense. enjoy reading! </p>
<p>spotify playlist below !!</p>
<p>https://open.spotify.com/playlist/40lmGp7FhOw5H4l2hUSSmG?si=-714kt36RICsqicjznjkNQ</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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